The real shock about this week’s decision to ban letting fees to tenants is that it did not happen earlier. For more than a decade in Money we have highlighted the exploitative activity of some (but by no means all) letting agents. It evidently reached such absurd levels that in the end even a Tory government had to end the farce.

We have seen letting agents demand £800 in fees on a £650-a-month one-bed flat. Bills for £360 for running a standardised contract through the photocopier, and £90 for a credit check that costs the agent little more than a fiver. Tenants have had to go through the rigmarole of these sorts of bills every time they are forced to move.

Will rents go up if unfair letting fees are banned?

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Back in May 2004 I wrote how some letting agents were “deceiving tenants out of huge amounts of cash with myriad charges and fees that verge on the criminal”. In 2009 I wrote “Letting agents: are they even worse than estate agents?” The same year I suggested we “let letting agents sweat”. Finally in June this year I wrote a column headlined “It’s time to end the great letting agency rip-off in England and Wales”.

Truth is, some agents got too greedy. Not that many will agree. When news of the ban emerged, Haart said it was “yet another unwelcome and haphazard government intervention ... yet another government blow for landlords.” LCP, a London agent, said it was a “further attack on beleaguered landlords”.

The victim mentality among some agents and landlords is comical. Official figures this week showed that over the past four years, average incomes have nudged ahead by 1.7% a year, while rents have gone up 2.2% and house prices have jumped 5.6%. In parts of the country, it has been a lot worse.

It is simply undeniable that the owners of property have won, and tenants have lost. Buy-to-let merchants have made gains of 1,400% since 1996, far better than any other investment. Yet it’s these winners who bleat loudest. If I were them I’d have kept my gob shut about just how much money I had been skimming off working people.

Letting agents will now have to try to pass the costs on to landlords, which is only right

Some more perspicacious landlords saw it coming. David Lawrenson of LettingFocus.com said: “Banning all tenant fees is a draconian step. However, the letting agency business, in particular, only has itself to blame. Too many agents charged rapacious levels of fees, frequently far in excess of the actual costs. Also, we are convinced too many engaged in hiding fees, only revealing them at the last minute when the tenant was committed.”

Letting agents will now have to try to pass the costs on to landlords, which is only right because they are the customer and are in a much better position to decide if the fee is acceptable, or if they wish to take their business elsewhere. Unfortunately, on forums such as Property118 some agents are trying to devise “workarounds” – one alleges that “larger agents are secretly discussing setting up referencing companies, and will only deal with prospective tenants who will use their company”.

I doubt such ruses will work. I’m more inclined to agree with an agent on the same forum who said that the ban on fees has been in Scotland for many years and “the sun is still rising in the morning and the rental market is alive and kicking. One thing I find strange is the view that landlords will have to put up rents to accommodate this.

“In my experience, the market sets the rent, not the landlord. Most landlords will take as much rent as they can get for a property in the prevailing market, so to challenge this on the basis that rents will rise seems a bit disingenuous.”